The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig: Riddles of Food and Culture

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Página 138For this reason, throughout millions of years prior to the domestication of the
ruminants, natural selection did not favor humans who had an ability to
synthesize lactase after infancy. Yet genes for extending the period of lactasesufficiency into ...

Página 143In a quantitative sense, extremely fair skin ranging into shades of pink is as "
abnormal" as is lactase sufficiency in adulthood. Most of humankind possesses
brown or dark skin, and perhaps as recently as ten-thousand years ago no
humans ...

Página 149Yet yogurt can retain a considerable amount of lactose if it is not thoroughly
fermented — and this is the characteristic form in which it is consumed in
southern India. So individuals who are lactase-sufficient continue to derive more
calcium ...

Acerca del autor (1987)

Marvin Harris is an American anthropologist who was educated at Columbia University, where he spent much of his professional career. Beginning with studies on race relations, he became the leading proponent of cultural materialism, a scientific approach that seeks the causes of human behavior and culture change in survival requirements. His explanations often reduce to factors such as population growth, resource depletion, and protein availability. A controversial figure, Harris is accused of slighting the role of human consciousness and of underestimating the symbolic worlds that humans create. He writes in a style that is accessible to students and the general public, however, and his books have been used widely as college texts.